Follow-up Friday 17 Feb 2012

2.Process the O’Neal family papers I received from my new
O’Neal cousin (determined by DNA test)

3.Enter information on the William Godwin family of Escambia
County, Alabama (whose descendant was determined to be a match to our line of
Godwins from NC)

4.Process the Barton family Find-A-Grave photos from Center
Point Cemetery in Howard County, Arkansas that a volunteer uploaded for me

And here is my progress so far:

1.No progress

2.No progress

3.I believe I have all of the information on William’s
descendants entered into my RootsMagic database. We got sidetracked by trying
to find information about a John Godwin from North Carolina who was found on a
Revolutionary War Roll. Evidently he fought with a bunch of people who moved
with William Godwin from North Carolina to Georgia and then eventually they all
settled in Escambia County, Alabama together. It also seems that Zilla Godwin
who married Jesse Baggett (one of the men who was on the Revolutionary War Roll
and who moved to GA and then to AL with the others) might have been the same
woman who was the daughter of Richard Godwin and Zillah Thomas who moved from
Sampson County, North Carolina to Hancock County, Georgia about the same time
my Nathan Godwin moved to Indiana. We have always believed this Richard was
related to our line of Godwins, but have
been unable to determine how.

4.Several Find A Grave memorials had already been created for my Barton ancestors in Center Point Cemetery in Howard County, Arkansas back in 2008 by FAG volunteers. I requested that photos be taken of the headstones and was notified this week that my request had been fulfilled and the photos uploaded by a volunteer. I compared the information in the memorial biography to what was on the headstones from the
photographs that the FAG volunteer took. However, the resolution on many of the photos rendered them unreadable, even if I downloaded them and tried to zoom. So I emailed the volunteer and asked her to email me copies of the originals. I thought that the ones that were
uploaded to FAG somehow lost resolution when they were uploaded. Unfortunately the ones she emailed me were just too low quality of resolution that I could not zoom to read them. They were 50-150kb in size. Maybe if she had set her camera to a little higher setting I would have been able to zoom in better? Oh well. Also, I’ve been struggling with creating a citation
for my FAG entries in my RootsMagic database and although I finally settled
upon some standard text, there was only one field in my RootsMagic source template that I
could squeeze all of this text into. So I created a custom source template in my
RM software in which I could enter the deceased person's name, memorial number, memorial creator's name and date, etc as separate fields. This made me much less stressful about creating my FAG source citations!

5.My
Mother’s Family Finder DNA results came
back, so of course I got distracted with those. She had 214 matches! Which for
Family Finder is a LOT! Of those 214 matches about 90 of them were matches she
and I had in common. She has a lot of 3rd cousins as well and
suprisingly, I have already received emails from 2 of her matches requesting
information! (usually you have to beg and plead with people to get them to
respond to YOUR emails). Unfortunately I have not been able to find a
connection to them yet.

6.Learned
more about my JONES family. My 2nd great-grandmother was Emily Jones
and she married John Riley Lasiter. Jones was a possible common surname with
one of my Mother’s DNA matches, so I did some research to see if I could find
more information about Emily Jones. I found Emily and John Lasiter living in
Madison Co., AR on the 1870 census report and then I found the family of Thomas
and Saphronia Jones also living in Madison Co., AR in 1870. Going back to 1860,
I found Thomas and Saphronia Jones with a daughter Emily C Jones who matched up
to my Emily Lasiter. Based on the places of birth listed for the children of
Thomas and Saphronia Jones on the 1860 census, I was able to determine that the
family moved from TN to AR about 1851 and that Thomas and Saphronia Jones were
probably married between 1840 and 1847 when Sally Ann Jones, the first child
listed on the 1860 census, was born. I did a search on Ancestry.com in the
Tennessee Marriage records for Thomas J Jones and found it right away: Thomas J
Jones to Safrona Phelps, 18 Dec 1844, Davidson Co., TN. I followed it up with
an 1850 Davidson Co., TN census record for Thos J Jones, 30 years old, Sophrona
Jones, 26 years old, Sarah Jones, 4 years old, and Tennessee Jones, 1 year old. I have now taken my tree back another generation and learned of a new family name and location from which to start searching in!

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

Contact Me: Ginger R. SmithI am an avid genealogist and librarian living in Durham, NC. I do extensive research at the North Carolina State Archives for my Brooks and Godwin families. If you would like assistance locating records at the Archives, please feel free to email me. This blog highlights my research and DNA testing updates. Please check out my Surname Page to see if we have any relatives in common!